david.winter

That's correct. But Jungle Hunt differs by two bytes located at the bank switching addresses, however I don't know why they are not 00s or FFs. I used an eprom reader to read the chips separately so I didn't dump through the cartridge hardware.

Hello David, Yes, those are the bankswitching hotspots so they are never read by the Atari. Your eprom dumper might read them accurately though, and it is interesting to know about Jungle hunt. Alpha Beam would take a disassembly of the rom to figure out what those values are actually doing. There are some discussions of different roms going on in this thread I started: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/103737-2600-rom-comparisions-and-dumps/ You'll note that towards the end Tempest mentioned some of the roms you posted and I compared them to Rom Hunter's collection. You can see the results there. Also if you happen to have any of the games that need dumping which are listed on the first page of the thread, well it'd certainly be appreciated. Especially the Secam ones, which you may or may not have being from France. Jeff Hi Jeff, I never saw the Secam cartridges in France. The 2600 units were connected through the RF antenna plug here, and the video signal was modulated in secam. But the initial video generated by the 2600 chips only differed by its refresh rate and possibly some colors. So I really wonder what the "S" means on these cartridges. Do they have different colors than the normal PAL releases ? As for the roms, thanks for posting them, I still have a last NTSC loaner at my parents to dump. Can't remember the title. But I'd like to know the differences in Sorcerer's Apprentice and Jungle hunt. David

Thanks ! Apparently, they all differ by two bytes at 0FF9 and 1FF8: your dumps have FF whereas my loaners have 00. I suppose this is a bank-switching issue but Jungle Hunt has 6B & 9D. The other surprise is Alphabeam which has 29 different bytes. They all seem to be data. On the left is my PAL dump. On the right is the dump you provided. 27F: 69 63 2CF: 38 34 32C: 30 27 4E6: 38 36 59D: 38 36 B11: 58 C8 B12: 58 C8 B13: 58 C8 B14: 58 C8 D07: AC AA D0A: BA BC DA8: 0C 0A DB2: 0A 08 DBC: 08 06 DC6: 06 04 DD0: 04 02 DDA: 06 04 DE4: 08 06 DEE: 0A 08 FF9: 00 FF 1DE8: 0C 08 1DE9: 0A 06 1DEA: 08 04 1DEB: 06 02 1DEC: 04 00 1DED: 06 02 1DEE: 08 04 1DEF: 0A 06 1FF8: 00 FF David

Yes, I have an eprom burner so I already dumped everything, but I want the real PAL releases to compare before posting. David

Just wanted to show you two things: - The (in my opinion) holy grail "gray case" for the 2600: this one was acquired from a friend who happened to work with Atari in France back in 1983 or so. I have no idea why this case was made. He tole me it was a special and very limited and numbered release for the launch of the console in France, but I had a 2600 since 1981 at home some this looks quite late in 1983, especially since it's the black version, as opposed to the woodgrain we had in 81. This said, it has a low 71 serial and has an Atari logo on it, so this is still originall stuff. I'd be happy to know more about it. See pictures. - A nice set of 9 loaners for PAL games. They all contain eprom boards, Rev 4. No idea of they are pre-release of final versions but PAL loaners are, in my opinion, much rarer than NTSC ones. It's actually the first time I see them. See pictures... ! David

Hi guys, I am including here the binaries of three pre-release prototypes of NTSC games for the 2600. I got them along with the Rubik's Cube 3D prototype several years ago. Unfortunately they were all loose boards without information. They all differ more or less from the final binaries, especially Sorcerer's Apprentice which has the most noticeable differences (different start-up music, one horizontal bar missing, etc.). For the others, I'll let you check and eventually find the differences as I have no time. Games are: - Sorcerer's Apprentice (no infos, board C017782 Rev 4) - Gravitar (4-4 on label partially damaged, board C017782 Rev 4) - RealSports Football (FOOT on one eprom other label lost. Board C017782 Rev 3) David sorcerer_proto.bin gravitar_proto.bin rsfoot_proto.bin

Oliver: The story with Bill Rusch is earlier than the Brown Box. This dates back to 1967 when the team was working on Unit #3, a reduced version of the complex and too expensive Unit #2, also known as "Pump Unit". Unit #3 only played Chase games and Target Shooting games. Something more attractive had to be created and Bill Rusch was therefore attached to the project, since he was known for his creativity. Then he proposed the third (and not second) spot generator (that you call paddle), controlled by the machine instead of the players. Thus the first Tennis game was born. From this time every prototype featured this game. The english was by design. There was no angle effect on the paddle in those games. The angle was first created by Atari in 1972. David Winter - http://www.pong-story.com

Oliver: As you might know, I've been in close touch with Ralph for ten years. I also owned most of the original documents now in the Smithsonian. Next month, Ralph will be 87 years old. The more time passes, the more you forget. He never stopped insisting on how much human memory alters by itself, that you think you tell the right thing when it's actually not exactly what you believe. I happened to correct him several times and made many corrections in the script of his book. It's not that he's wrong, it's just that he was involved in such a large number of game stories and designs that 40+ years later it is almost impossible to remember everyting in detail. If he didn't take the meticulous care of writing and dating his schematics (and all the various documents I recovered in 2002), several important parts of the video game history at Sanders Associates would still be wrong. Also, don't forget that Sanders Associates contacted the various TV manufacturers in late 1968 to find a licensee. So at this date, all the games were working and played at Sanders ! David Winter - http://www.pong-story.com

Just a little correction: the first Tennis game wasn't first played in 1969, but in Nov 1967. Click here to view the first 1967 schematics of the Slicer design (Unit #4), the very first Tennis prototype. The circuits were extremely unstable and were quickly replaced by the circuits later implemented in the Unit #6, the Brown Box and then Odyssey. The next prototype to play Tennis, with all the changes and additional games, was Unit #6. Unit #5 was an add-on to simulate a hockey game, but was never functional. Unit #6 was finished in late 1968, shortly before the Brown Box (Unit #7). You can find every note and schematic of those prototypres in the Smithsonian's archive by clicking here. So I'm sorry to disappoint you guys, it's not the 40th birthday, but the 42nd ! David Winter - http://www.pong-story.com

Like others said I too confim that I have long since cut pin 4 on most of my NES consoles (that was back in the late 1990s) and I never had any problem running games from the US, Europe, Japan, etc. I would never ground it because you do not know what signal goes to it. Suppose there's a +5V signal coming to a grounded pin: you get a short circuit which can have no incidence on very fast signals, but which can easily destroy a chip when they stay up too long. This is why in many cases we use a pull-down resistor to limit the current and avoid problems.

Hi there, I didn't read the whole thread but if you're familiar with electronics and want to disable the protection chip, you only need to cut pin 4 (don't cut the track since there's one connected to the pin under the chip). This said I don't know why the Championship cart would not work without the protection chip. Looks like there is some kind of RAM byte or bit which gets electronically set to a particular value once the protection protocol between the system and the cartridge passed through. Anyhow...

I too had troubles opening my own systems but the only solution I found so far was to grip the screws using a wire grip (wire cuter). This requires a bit of patience but you end up removing the screws. Then I would saw a line on the top of the head so that normal screw drivers would then work. In the other hand I found some systems with different screws with a square hole on the center of their tops. A normal flat screw driver will work fine.

These Radofin cartridges will work with all Radofin cartridge-based system except the latest ones which play more advanced games. You should be able to use these cartridges on the Telesports 2, 3 and 4 series. Some other systems could use the same cartridges but I don't recall their brands right now. Probably Acetronics. David Winter www.pong-story.com

This is the most common model released by Radio Shack. Two models existed: model 60-3060 which only played four games (no target shooting) and model 60-3061 which played the two target shooting games in addition to the four pong variants. The game chip is GI's AY-3-8500. This game is often found on eBay and sells at quite cheap prices. Loose units usually make $4.99 or so, complete boxed ones virtually unused can make up to $19.99 but often sell at $10-$15. David.

Hi there, The first time I ever played with a 2600 was back in 1982, just a year after this console turned up in France. The game was being offered to my father for his birthday, so in october 1982. Therefore I was almost 8 years old and my little brother was 5. The console was still the woodgrain model in its later version with 4 switches, although the 6-switch one was sold during a short time in 1980 or 1981. We had a couple games: Combat, Tennis, Space Invaders, Starmaster and Choper Command (can't recall how to write this one at the moment). The only game we almost never played was Tennis. All others were great. We never had any additional game (we didn't really think about it) and games were expensive (as far as I recall, they cost 250 french francs at that time, so $35 to $40). Sometime later in 1983 or 84 at the latest, a friend of mine got a Colecovision with Zaxxon and this was most impressive compared to our 2600. My cousin already had an Intellivision and the only games I realy liked to play were Snafu and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin. Later in 86, Zelda came out on the NES. This game had similarities with D&D and when I discovered it in 1987 in the US while visiting a friend, I couldn't stop playing it. Anyway, as you can read, our 2600 really served during three of four years and then we passed to other games. I think we really stopped playing with our 2600 in 1985 or 1986 becase computers like the Amstrad CPC, Atari ST and Amiga 500 came up with really better graphics and sound, so 2600 games became boring and really limited (at least concerning those we had). I wrote a file with my memories around our 2600, if I put a hand on it I'll publish it here. David. PS: we never had a pong game at home until 1994 when I started collecting that stuff...

In the US there's an excellent product called Deoxit. It's a spray that will clean all your potentiometers and contacts. It also lubs the conductive surface and once you have cleaned your stuff with it, you no longer have troubles. The only real problem you may have is a worn porentiometer where the resistive layer has been so manipulated that it gives partial contacts at some places. This cannot be fixed and requires that the potentiometer be changed. From memory, Atari C-100 uses normal pots which aren't hard to come by. You may also take those of the Atari 2600 as substitutes. Finally, make sure you use the correct tools to remove the two screws holding the top and bottom plastic parts of the console. Some screws have a "square" hole and are easy to remove. Some have a tree-segment "X" and require a grip to be carefully removed. Once you have removed those screws, use a metal saw to cut a line on their top and allow screwing them back with a normal screw driver. David Winter - http://www.pong-story.com

Hi there, I find a bit stupid that the original rotary controlers be not included . These guys apparently understood the retro scene and made the console look like the original. They took the time to bring new games. Why not using those Tennis/Pong controllers too ? They would never be a big money saver, quite in the contrary, especially if they would have allowed using them without support/warranty (i.e "you may use your old rotary controllers at your risks"). Talking about the Pong remake, it looks better indeed, but here again they could have done a version closer to the '72 arcade version since they put the original yellow color around the play field. Still, I like the Pong game they're doing, after all, only a few specialists would really care about differences with the '72 version. Of yes, I'm a specialist but I don't care This said, somebody could suggest them to do another retro Pong console with all the variants Atari made, but since they already did the CDROM "Pong it's back" I guess the answer would be obvious... Da^!d.

The "video game" term was never used before the mid-1970s. In fact, Ralph Baer always talked about TV Games. The problem is that the definition of video game has changed by the time. Everybody thinks that "video" means "vision on a screen" which is absolutely false. The "video" word qualifies the technology used to display the games. Of course, nowadays everybody will call videogame any game which displays on a screen. Back in the 1960s, either you had to use a computer to display a game, or you had to build your own system to display games on normal TV sets and monitors which all required video signals. Hence the videogame term. But now that computers are widely used to program and play advanced video games, people get confused. Theoretically, vector and LCD games aren't video games. Hell with that ! Let's call them video games if we want, but please don't forget the real story. If you decide that modern computer games are videogames whatever their display technologies, this is not a reason for saying that early computer games were video games. They were only precursors. David Winter

It's amazing to see how much people can get confused with the definition of a video game. It's not because a game displays on a screen that it is a video game. Video game means game displayed through video signals. That 1958 game was obviously a precursor of the video game, but because it did not use any video signal, it wasn't a video game. Same with Space War (1961) which used an X/Y analog vector display, and older games such as TicTacToe from 1952 which displayed on a dot matrix CRT (which you can see on my 1952 TicTacToe page). David Winter

I found the Windows version much more accurate. I tried a PROTO version of Sorcerer's Apprentice which I have, and could now find the differences with the release. It's mostly in the audio (music, sound effects, etc). Thanks guys. I'll continue checking my other protos, as I also have a Gravitar and RS Football which differ from the release.

Since I'm in France I only have PAL (Secam) 7800s. I even have a spare one but I need to know if the bios is socketed. Else, I'll have fun cutting the chip off and removing the pins one by one.

Are you sure about this ? The web page says Development framework to get you started developing Atari 7800 programs and the ZIP file doesn't contain any doc about the cable pinouts, nor the program that runs on the 2600/7800 and dumps a ROM. To dump on a 2600/7800, you need some sort of piggy-back cartridge containing the dumper program, and you would plug your game over it. That's the only way I see to dump a ROM on a real 2600.

Unless I'm wrong, this will only allow me to program a 7800. I need some schematics to build a 2600 ROM reader. Best would be a cheap reliable design that plugs to the parallel port and directly dumps any 2600 cart to your PC.

The emulator says 262 scanlines so it's NTSC. I have quite a lot of these 'S' cartridges (small S sticker on the backside of the cart, not on the label). I also have several P cartridges (little P letter right to the game reference). I don't know whether the ROM differs from NTSC to PAL/SECAM. If I could build myself a 2600 reader where I can plug any cart and have it dumped, I would quickly come up with a number of dumps. I also have programmed a small program that checks duplicate files in two directories, so I could dump all my carts and launch the program to automtically delete dumps same than the NTSC versions. If you know a reliable cartridge reader I'd build one.

Hey dude, since you have two of them, can you sell me one ? KIDDING !!!!!!!!!! Very neat find, really ! And thanks for putting the binary here Curt. I'll try the game asap.